Photographic culture and community in 20th century Sudanese Nubia

This project seeks to create momentum and inclusive research practice around the study of photographic culture in Sudan in the 20th century. Sudanese photography is largely absent from the flourishing field of research into colonial and postcolonial photography across Africa. This project seeks to explore, through a focus on the area around Abri/Amara West in northern Sudan:

•  How were locally rooted modernities fashioned, projected and circulated through photography in Sudanese Nubia across the 20th century?
• Can Sudanese Nubian agency and creativity be integrated into our narratives of image production, both as photographers, enablers and consumers?
• How might Sudanese diaspora communities activate an expanded archive – combining those held in institutions and the micro-archives curated by families – in their futures? 

A Cambridge Humanities Research Grant (2026) will enable:

• Documentation of oral histories of family photography practice in the Abri area, led by Shadia Abdo Rabo (Sudan National Museum) and Sanaa El-Batal (University of Khartoum).
• “Community Studios” with Sudanese and Nubian diaspora communities in London and Cambridge, bringing family photographs into dialogue with the collections of the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, and the Royal Commonwealth Society collections at the University Library, in Cambridge.
• A September 2026 workshop in Cambridge on the theme of visual culture in 20th century Nubia.

A wider research project also considers photography by Sudan Political Service officials during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899-1955 held in the Sudan Archive, Durham University) and archaeological photography from Amara West now in the Egypt Exploration Society (1938-1950).

The research will underpin the first academic book on photography in Sudan, yet also test modes of community participation around an expanded notion of the Nubian photographic archive. This work is critical and urgent as both film photography and the living memories of its use disappear from Sudan through the arrival of mobile phones, further exacerbated by conflict and extremely limited archival infrastructure.

The project is part of the Collections-Connections-Communities Strategic Research Initiative, and its broader programme of work around African collections in Cambridge.

Image: photograph mounted in a family photograph album, showing a brother and sister from Ernetta Island (Northern Sudan), taken at Carneval Camera, Khartoum, 1983. Used with permission of the owner.